


Wolves and girls both have sharp teeth

by captainhurricane



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Blood Drinking, Existential Angst, F/F, Fem!Keith, Minor Character Death, More tags to be added, Murder, Soulmarks, Stalking, Strangers to Lovers, Vampires, Werewolves, fem!shiro - Freeform, paranormal lesbians, unbetaed we die like women
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-25
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2019-07-17 12:32:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16095752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainhurricane/pseuds/captainhurricane
Summary: Someone is stalking Shiro, a lady vampire of a thousand years and the shadow queen of her City. Keith, a homeless, lonely werewolf, would rather just be left alone than be whisked into helping Shiro.But feelings are rough, no matter how old and experienced you are. The bothersome, unconsummated soulbond certainly doesn't help.





	1. fangs bared

**Author's Note:**

  * For [winterbitch (WinterLadyy)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WinterLadyy/gifts).



> title from a Black Widow comic. 
> 
> also just keep in mind that these two and their relationship - especially at the beginning - are going to be rather different than from what they are in canon universe and its related fics. in short, this is Shiro without Keith and Keith without Shiro: also, they are ladies mostly because I feel like writing ladies and femSheith is good and also because Byzantium was a huge inspiration behind Shiro's character.

The nights are hers. The days are hers too, but the nights feel more like hers, wrapping her in a cloak of darkness, making her vanish into the crowd of other night-dwellers.

 

She’s lost count of the years she’s lived, a thousand of them, or more, she’s slept a couple of decades, even a century here and there. Sometimes she grows tired of life, so tired. She’s left behind her first name, her family name, left only Shiro. 

 

Shiro. It rolls off the tongue like blood. 

 

She has lovers who scream it into the air. She whispers it against her cats’ fur, the only beings in the universe that she loves with every inch of her stained soul. Mommy will take care of you. Shiro’s here, mommy Shiro is going to take care of you. I love you so much, my babies. 

 

There are three cats now, in this muddy 21th century year. Sometimes there were five. Sometimes even ten. 

But there’s always been Shiro and this house and cats. They are less intrusive than people, even other vampires, easier to talk to than the spirits that sometimes rattle around in the family crypt and in the main house - they never stray to the more modern parts, possibly bothered by the electric lights and the machines they never knew how to use. 

 

Shiro was a predecessor of most of her family, in her life, a thousand years ago. 

 

How short that time feels when she loses centuries into debauchery, shoving her kindness, shoving her original kind soul deeper into herself until she can no longer find it. She used to be a kind woman, she knows it, she remembers it. Always humans have been slow and slumbering and stupid but she loved them all no less. She dedicated her life to gods then, during her living life. 

 

But did she really live? 

 

Does she really live now? 

 

She’d like to think so. She’s a silent ruler of her city, a queen of shadows, a war veteran too tired for any wars, a living nightmare who still has nightmares herself. Time doesn’t heal all wounds, it’s only turned them into scars. 

Sunlight or garlic or crosses wouldn’t kill an Old One like Shiro but nights are still her favourite times to be, garlic smells awful and crosses are merely a reminder of an oppressive religion. What are gods to her now, as she is a god herself, in a way. A god without a religion, a god without a congregation. 

 

A lonely, lonely god. 

 

**

 

Shiro has never really tried to hide in her City. She doesn’t kill the ones she bites anymore, lets them stagger off into the night with only fading pinpricks in their necks or thighs or wherever the most delicious veins run. She knows they’ll only think of her as a fading hallucination or dream come morning. 

 

Most of the City merely knows her as an eccentric millionaire, maybe knows her as a personal trainer, an author, an art critic, whatever role Shiro has taken over the years. She’s done her best not to lose herself into the countless years behind her and ahead of her, but it’s been hard. 

 

She moves slow and the world moves so fast. 

 

The only constant is the house, her own ever expanding Winchester house. 

 

She lets her cats out one particularly chilly Autumn morning and drapes herself in a parka, pulls up her hair and gets ready for her morning run. She doesn’t lock up the house: the people of the City either fear her, think of her as a friend or know some parts of the house are haunted. Either way, what she does keep locked up is beneath the house, the key safely in her breast pocket. Most of the house only has wailing memories. 

 

She smiles to herself as she puts on her headphones, loops them around her ears to keep them in place. Her City has been at peace for months: no villains at her door, no strays lurking in her alleyways. Not a youngling to visit for guidance and advice, no other Old Ones to have a drink with. There has even been silence from the faeries and that stings Shiro a bit. She does think of both Allura and her husband Lotor as her friends: even when they usually come accompanied with their royal consort Lance, who always seems like an afterthought to Shiro. Whatever glowing beings like Allura and Lotor see in the chatty human, Shiro will never understand. But Lance is a breath of fresh air. But even he hasn’t showed up.

 

Shiro jogs onwards and hums to a song. 

 

Peace rings hollow between her ribs. She’s known both war and peace, known how delicate the latter can be and how chaotic the former. 

 

Peace brings boredom with it and with boredom comes loneliness. This is the time when Shiro usually finds someone warm to cuddle with, someone to open her heart to. But there’s no one now. 

She keeps these thoughts at bay and wonders if it will take another thousand years for her to truly come to terms with the fact that she’ll always be like this. Lonely, immortal. Forever. Certainly she is beautiful, a handsome woman of her own, keeps herself in shape in her own gym, tries to keep up with the times and sometimes fails. But what is beauty when hers is a cold one, made of marble and stolen blood? 

 

She runs and runs until her lungs scream at her, her thousand-year-old lungs and the absurdity of her own existence catches up to her, as it sometimes does. Shiro pops into one of her favourite cafés in her City and gets herself a bottle of something icy and a bagel to go. The barista stutters at the sight of her, a new boy she hasn’t seen before.

 

“Keep the change,” she says to him. 

 

He stutters, flushes. Gods, but he smells young. 

 

Shiro smiles gently and retreats, chugging out of her bottle. She doesn’t like to stray too far from her City or her house, not these days. She’s been all around the world and now she is so far from where she was born - the first time, that is. She is also far from the place where she died and was born again, into this. 

 

This is where Shiro’s heart keeps her, her undead heart that still beats and keeps her going. 

 

She chugs and chugs and walks home, legs burning, lungs aching but it is a good ache. The bagel has cream cheese and onions - no garlic - and bell pepper and she chews with pleasure. Her fangs stay hidden, the ones that pierce the skin just right and let out a delicious trickle of blood. The predator’s fangs that fill her mouth with sharp edges that she only uses when in serious danger, those never come out. She barely remembers them anymore. 

 

Her canines don’t look much different now, just a little sharper than usual, maybe enough to give the more paranoid mortal a startle. They help her with harder foods better though, rip with ease into the rarest pieces of meat. Maybe there is a piece of werewolf in her, after all. 

 

She gets through the gate to her yard and closes it behind her. It doesn’t creak as she oils it regularly. 

“Red?” Shiro calls. “Black? Blue? Where are you, kitties?” She has the crumbs of her bagel left and she crouches. Usually they know she’s home by now and come to her. Maybe they have gone on adventures. At least Shiro has remembered to get them neutered, as much as she likes kittens, she fears kittens would get lost in her huge house or be gobbled up by the phantoms. Her three furry friends know where to go now and what to do. 

 

She calls them again but when they don’t show, she gets back inside. The morning is dim, but beautiful. Shiro makes plans for the day and does them. She’s made herself a routine. She does have a job, of sorts, even though she doesn’t need one: her huge fortune from relatives long passed, her pension from her soldier days keep her afloat. But she boots up her computer and chats with the world, watches cat videos, puts her feet up. She takes a luxuriously long bath in her clawed bathtub and puts a bath bomb that makes her bubbles and water look like galaxies. 

 

That is one of the dreams Shiro still holds onto, ever since she had looked up, long ago and seen the stars. 

 

I want to be there. Gods, I wish to be among the stars. She’s working on it, slowly. She takes online classes, studies all she can in the huge amounts of spare time she has. She keeps herself busy, like this, playing with bubbles and watching the sparkling stars glitter on her skin. All these little things to keep the gnawing loneliness at bay.

 

Her day passes as it always does: sometimes she sleeps through the whole day, as the sun does sting her sensitive eyes, sometimes she sleeps through the night like humans do. But today is a day when she stays awake and watches the rain arrive and bang like war drums on her windows. 

 

The upkeep of the mansion sometimes takes too much out of her but hiring extra help would require explanations she doesn’t wish to give. Her secrets are her own, now and forever.

 

Maybe, just maybe, that might change: on the next night that Shiro takes to the streets, stomach empty, the air feels different, more stale. She sniffs and clads herself in darkness, dyes her lips red. What is it that makes her skin tingle so? She bites a man she pulls with her to one of the numerous pitch-dark alleyways, licks his young, fresh blood off her lips and sends him on his way, murmuring drunkenly to himself. 

 

The air shivers, like waiting for something. For her? 

 

Then her ears pick it up: that sound, that sound she hasn’t heard in a while. An unmistakable growl of a wolf, driven into a corner, ready to fight. There is fear in that growl, but also anger, fierce, crackling anger that makes Shiro’s skin rise to goosebumps, now warm with the young man’s blood. 

 

A were? Is there a were in her City now when there has been none for months? Most werewolves prefer the colder climates, not this mild nothing of Shiro’s City. But here it is anyway, a growl, a smell of a mortal and Shiro runs. She doesn’t know what she will find, a werewolf attacking a human in her City, on her streets or a werewolf being attacked, but she will have to put a stop to it. Her heart pounds as she runs, fast and agile, her thick heels thumping against the asphalt. 

 

The werewolf yelps, the sound changing until it’s a human shouting - no, it’s two humans, three? It’s a fight. 

 

Shiro turns a corner, turns another corner, runs onwards, as silent as the shadows at her feet and turns another corner and - 

Which one is the wolf, Shiro can’t tell, the smells in the alleyway are mixed up together in one mess of pain and fear and fierce, hot anger. But three men are ganging up on a person, smaller, slender and this person is fighting back - the moon doesn’t quite reach down here to illuminate the alley properly but Shiro’s sight has no trouble seeing in the dark. 

 

The wolf-  the werewolf she heard earlier, it’s this woman, bleeding and bruised, face twisted into a grimace, hair too long and shaggy to make out any proper features. She’s hissing insults at the men and swinging fists and legs and doing a better job fighting back than most weres that Shiro has seen have. 

 

So Shiro stops to watch, even when every part of her is telling her to interfere, to help, she’s never watched from the sidelines when there have been people in need, but now? This woman reveals a hint of sharp teeth and a flash of golden, gleaming eyes and scratches one of the men until he drops on his knees, howling.

 

“Don’t kill them,” Shiro whispers.

 

The wolf, the girl, the strange woman that Shiro has never seen, barely pays attention. “Fuck you!” She shouts instead and her blood drip-drip-drips and if Shiro hadn’t just eaten - - even still Shiro’s throat is dry. The woman is bleeding heavily. 

 

She doesn’t kill the men. 

 

They’re unconscious or groaning when the woman finally staggers down to her own knees, breathing heavily.

“Who the fuck are you?” She hisses.

 

Shiro puts up her hands and tries to smile. “I - you’re bleeding. May I help you?” Weres can be skittish. Or cocky. Sometimes covering their fear with pride. Which one is this? The anger radiates off the werewolf like red-hot fire and brings a flush to Shiro’s cheeks.

 

The woman reveals her teeth, now back to normal human ones, her eyes a cool shade of violet: a galaxy of their own. She doesn’t let Shiro pull her up, but reluctantly accepts Shiro’s arm around her shoulders. It’s the prosthetic one, of course, the woman’s eyes flicker towards it but she asks no questions. 

 

She still smells like blood and anger. 

 

“What’s your name?” Shiro asks and leads the woman out of the alley.

 

“What would a vamp like you do with it?” The woman asks. “Don’t look surprised. You all stink the same.” 

 

Shiro’s mouth twitches. What a brat. “I am going to help you, you know. You’re bleeding very heavily onto one of my favourite jackets.” 

 

The woman grumbles. “You can call me Keith. That’s all you’re getting, Fangs.”

 

“And you may call me Shiro, little wolfy.” 


	2. show me your teeth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The girls find a body. Tension simmers.

Only kill when necessary. The planet has grown too full, the humans too greedy, but it is not Shiro’s right to decide their fates. Only kill when necessary. But she might just kill this damn mutt she had brought in from the cold out of the goodness of her stupid bleeding heart. 

 

It had all started when Shiro had taken Keith in her house, had watched her cats scurry away and hiss at the werewolf. After a brief argument, Shiro had practically shoved Keith into one of her huge bathrooms along with a towel and a bunch of clothes. The girl had been filthy. 

 

It had taken a few seconds for Keith to march out of the bathroom, completely naked, still covered in filth and blood and bruised, eyes burning.

 

“I can’t fucking believe it!” 

 

This is what is causing Shiro’s current headache. The fact that there is a red handprint on her left arm, a tingling soulmark, leftover from where Keith had grabbed her arm. 

 

See, Shiro had long given up on finding a soulmate: she’s looked at her body all over for bruises and marks the colour of her soulmate’s soul: but aside from the regular bruises and cuts, there had never been any. Now there is one. 

 

Now Keith also has one, blooming beautiful and purple on Keith’s shoulder where Shiro had nudged her. 

 

Never mind that under all that dirt and mud and scrapes Keith has a powerful, gorgeous body that Shiro certainly wouldn’t mind getting closer to: never mind that Keith is furious that her soulmate is a vampire - Shiro’s soul is singing with the knowledge that this is it, this is the reason Shiro has been on this planet for so long. It’s here, in this firecracker. 

 

Shiro still kind of wants to kill her. It’s like having a bratty child in her house. 

 

“Look, I didn’t -” she starts for the fifth time, holding a squirming Black against her chest. She’s freshly bathed herself, still pleasantly warm from it, clad in one of her silky bathrobes. Keith hadn’t let her check out her injuries: instead that damn mutt had dripped blood and mud all over Shiro’s beautiful carpets and nicely laminated floors and continues to drip blood where she paces in the main living room. 

Keith had only reluctantly bathed herself clean and put on the clothes Shiro had offered - although Keith hadn’t certainly been happy to know her previous clothes had been burned. Shiro’s not about to have those filth-crusted, ripped, slashed abominations under her damn roof.

 

Keith, as it turns out, doesn’t seem to know what happiness is. She’s full of fire with no proper outlet and it’s hard to tell if it’s the wolf in her or just the girl she was before she was turned into one. She rages against this soulmate bullshit - her words, not Shiro’s - but is tongue-tied when Shiro lays a hand on her shoulder. Keith is just shorter enough that she has to look up to Shiro. 

 

“I can’t help what I am,” Shiro whispers and gives Keith’s firm shoulder a squeeze. “And neither can you.” 

 

Keith inhales deep and flinches away from her touch. The shirt slips, just enough to show the flash of purple, the colour of Shiro’s soul, spreading like droplets of paint on water. “I have been fine without soulmates. I have been fine on my own. I don’t need you or want you.” 

 

Shiro sighs. “Calm down -” 

 

“Don’t tell me to calm down.” 

 

“Then leave. You are not a prisoner and I will not have you here if you insist on being this way.” Shiro’s jaw tightens. 

 

Keith lifts her chin, defiant, proud. Shiro knows her type. But Shiro doesn’t know Keith, not quite. 

 

“Acting like a child, you mean. Figures everyone would seem like children to you.” Keith reveals her teeth, reminiscent of a snarling wolf that she is. “Oh, don’t give me that look. Your reputation travels far. And I know the stink of a vampire. You Old Ones especially smell.” 

 

Shiro crosses her arms, wonders if she imagines Keith’s gaze flickering to the curves of her muscles. “I imagine we would smell to you. Don’t be so rude.” The galaxy on Keith’s shoulder beckons. It takes most of Shiro’s considerable willpower to not cover the red splash of colour on her arm. The skin throbs. She knows it’s her soul, telling her to move closer, claim her soulmate for her own, finish the connection.

 

Keith tosses her hair. Her eyes are pretty but full of anger, but also - Shiro’s watched people long enough to know fear when she sees it. If Keith was as a wolf now, her ears would be flat against her head. So Shiro smiles at her. “I bet you are gorgeous in your wolf-form, Keith. Why were you fighting those men as a human?” 

 

Keith licks her lips and shifts, further away, closes her body from Shiro. “I’m tired,” she says. “I don’t want to talk.” She lifts her hand to her shoulder and rubs it and Shiro knows, from the twitch of muscle on her face, from the way her cheeks flush, that Keith feels the same tingling..

 

“We should,” Shiro says, lifts her hands to show her bare palms. She takes a step closer. “About this. It is not a coincidence you are in my city, especially so close to where I just happened to be. Oh, Keith, you don’t know how long - “ Maybe it’s the wrong thing to say because Keith snarls and backs away from her. 

 

“Thanks for the bath and the clothes but I’m gonna go now. This is just something - bullshit - you did something, I can’t be bonded to a damn vampire-” Keith shudders, like the very thought was revolting to her. “So I’m leaving.” 

 

Shiro’s heart, old and withered but still beating, sinks. Hope is the one thing she’s never quite learned how to get rid of, it’s always been ignited: by love, by inventions, by the sure change of the world and mankind. It’s always been there, even if it’s been nothing but embers. Maybe it’s the only thing that’s kept her going. ”But Keith - “ 

 

“Shut it, vamp.” Keith turns on her heel, right at that moment and marches away, like a lonely soldier off to a war that she’s fighting alone. Shiro follows, a few steps away, mind full of words to make her stay because this is her soulmate, this is it: Keith might be rude and brusque and a werewolf, which makes her a pack animal by nature whereas Shiro is a vampire which makes her a lone wolf by her nature - and they might not even fit, but this is the decision of their souls.

 

Withdrawing from each other means pain, plain and simple.

 

Keith doesn’t stop to wonder the disappearance of her shoes - those half-rotten things burned alongside her clothes - but instead just slams her way through the front doors. 

 

Only to stop so abruptly that Shiro nearly slams into her. 

 

It’s not that it’s begun to rain, big, fat droplets the size of furious tears. It’s not even that it’s gotten cold and both women shiver at the chill.

 

It’s the fact that there’s a body on Shiro’s steps, mutilated to hell and back, barely recognizable as a human being. It wasn’t there when they came in, barely half an hour ago. There had been no noise, no strange smells. Not even the cats had reacted.

 

Shiro lays her hand on Keith’s marked shoulder and squeezes. “Back inside. Now.” 

 

Keith’s muscles are tense, ready to snap. The wolf growls under her skin, in her heart. She sniffs the air, sniffs it more, then crouches. The body looks like it’s been tossed there, left to rot like a carcass no one no longer wants. Already there are flies gathering, already Shiro is sure it would only take a minute for there to be an entire swarm. 

 

Keith pokes at the body, her nail extended into a claw. She turns the body on its back and they both shudder at the sight: both of them predators in their own lives, both with deadly secrets of being killers for years. But this? Unnecessary cruelty has never been Shiro’s thing. She’s left torture to her years in the army. She never kills these days if she can help it. Keith kills to defend herself, kills to sate her hunger on the full moon. 

 

They don’t do this. They don’t rip out faces or pull out eyes, they don’t carve Cheshire smiles onto people’s faces. The body is male, as far they can tell, completely covered in blood and something glistening and odd, substance Shiro hasn’t ever seen. When she crouches next to Keith, curious, her reaching hand is grabbed. 

 

“Don’t touch it,” Keith hisses and lets go immediately. She pokes again and now Shiro notices that Keith is careful to not let any of that substance in her hands, no further than her fierce killer claws. The substance evaporates on her claws with an audible hiss. 

 

Shiro swallows. “What is it?” Somehow she finds herself whispering. Her wrist aches pleasantly, tingles where Keith had grabbed it. Her very skin knows it’s her soulmate, the only one who will ever make her whole. 

 

“There’s silver, for sure,” Keith says. “Not a snack for you, this one.” She grins, her gaze flicking to Shiro. “Poisoned. With enough stuff that would kill even you.” 

 

“But not you? You are touching it.” Shiro brushes Keith’s arm. The skin rises to goosebumps and Keith quickly withdraws it, grin instantly gone.

 

“It would have to be a silver bullet to hurt me. Or wolfsbane. Nope. This guy is laced with enough poison precisely meant to kill vamps.” She idly wipes her claws on the front porch and gets up, clearly bothered when Shiro gets up too, taller and broader than her. Keith’s claws don’t withdraw. “I know because I’ve killed a shitton of you.” 

 

Shiro sighs. “I see.” She crosses her arms again and this time knows Keith looks at her arms, her muscles. If it’s admiration or fear, this time Shiro can’t quite tell: Keith has impressive walls up. 

 

“Sure as shit wasn’t me,” Keith says, still standing close to her, eyes as endless as the universe. “There are no wolves in this city. Neither should I be.” 

 

“Yeah. You shouldn’t.” Shiro wants to lay her hand on that shoulder again. “Don’t… look. Don’t go. Not at least until you’ve gotten something to eat. We - we don’t have to talk about the marks.” She lays her own hand on her mark. 

 

Keith doesn’t look at it. 

 

Gods damn it, she’s beautiful, her soul is a beautiful colour of flame, but her hatred for Shiro and her kind radiates off her in waves. Shiro’s withered, blackened, charred heart thuds and thuds and thuds, desperately. 


	3. burn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith is staring back at her. “Just how old are you exactly?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *knocks* is this thing on, is anyone reading this
> 
> also i wrote two chapters and forgot to add this one ... although this has been written weeks ago :::D whoops

Black, Red and Green are no more accustomed to Keith’s presence by next morning. To Shiro’s surprise, the werewolf has stayed the night. She had refused to use any of the empty bedrooms - five in total - and had instead curled up on the rugged tiger shrug in front of the obscenely large fireplace. At least she had accepted the pyjamas Shiro had graciously borrowed. 

 

The sight of her like this, deep asleep, dark hair messy, is almost cute. 

 

Shiro’s soulmark tugs at her, makes all of her skin tingle. It beckons her to go closer, to touch, to scent, to taste. It tells her that this is a part of her soul, right here. But there is still a dead person on her front porch and all three of her cats are hiding from Shiro’s new stray. 

 

How could this be the person universe chose for her? Shiro’s had a thousand years to search and find her soulmate and now that she’s here, Shiro’s almost… disappointed. A rowdy, filthy, angry lycanthrope certainly wasn’t what she envisioned. 

 

Shiro’s old enough to know most living beings only look after themselves, her included. She’s also old enough to know they can surprise her in the best of ways.

 

If Keith stays. 

 

Only if. 

 

Besides, Shiro needs her to move the body. Merely being near it had made Shiro’s hair stand up her neck: now it’s curled in an artful bun. 

Carefully she pads next to Keith, crouches and readies herself to wake but - a hand shoots out and grabs Shiro’s ankle, surprises her so completely that she can only yelp as she’s tossed on her back. 

 

Keith is instantly on her, Keith’s teeth bared and her usually dark eyes glowing a wolfish yellow. 

 

“It is just me,” Shiro says and smiles. Her heart skips a beat. 

 

Keith’s nose wrinkles, she sniffs tentatively. Her thighs, firm and muscled, press against Shiro’s body. “So you are, vamp,” she says, her voice sleep-heavy. The glow of the wolf vanishes from her eyes, leaving them indescribably dark. Her eyes are not brown, not black: they’re not quite blue either, they’re a night sky full of stars.

 

But before Shiro can admire any longer, Keith gets off of her. Keith’s lips part but she says nothing. She stomps away, away from Shiro. 

 

Shiro’s mark throbs. She sighs and gets up too, scratching idly at the mark. She knows the itching, the tingling will only worsen if they don’t accept each other as soulmates. 

 

The part of Shiro that still remains a romantic aches the worst: she wanted a prince or a princess, all those years ago when she heard about soulmates the first time. Now she just wants peace. It’s painfully obvious she won’t be able to find that with Keith, if Keith even accepts her. 

 

With another sigh Shiro walks after Keith and finds her pacing in the corridor, staring at the numerous paintings and pictures covering the walls. A few generations have inhabited this mansion and left their marks: there is a family portrait from five centuries ago, Shiro herself with her husband from then and their three children. All of them are long gone now. Shiro shows up in few other portraits and photos, as she had put up some herself, years ago. Now she rarely looks at them, as they contain too many centuries of lost love. 

 

“You’re really old, huh?” Keith says and idly scratches her stomach. Her skin lacks the marble smoothness that Shiro has, but it is inviting in its liveliness. Shiro tries not to look.

 

“Indeed,” she says instead. “Will you have breakfast? And - I must ask you to remove the body from the porch.”

 

Keith’s eyes are once more impossible to read as she glances at Shiro. “Don’t want the poor fucker to stink up the place, I get it. Wait, you eat?” 

 

Against her own desires, Shiro snorts. She rubs the scar crossing her nose. It’s been there for a century, one of the leftovers from the second world war. “Oh, Keith. Of course I eat. I don’t require it, as blood is my main source of sustenance but I do enjoy eating. I have never quite learned to be an extremely fantastic chef but as I have lived alone for so long - just blood gets tiring.” She flushes. The same stolen blood that even now runs through her old veins, brings that flush on. She is magic and she knows it. “Y-you probably want something meaty.” 

 

Keith’s eyebrow raises. “Never heard of a vegetarian werewolf, have you?” She rolls her eyes when Shiro stutters. “I’m not a damn vegetarian. Surviving on just beans and shit is, like you say, tiring. Show me what you’ve got, big girl.” 

 

Big girl? 

 

Shiro blinks. She’s heard all the pet names under the stars, all the insults that are possible to shove at a being like her. But big girl? Oh, people had liked that she is tall, compared her to Wonder Woman, to other Amazonian warriors, to Pallas Athene. But the way Keith says it, makes something hot curl inside Shiro’s stomach. 

 

Keith isn’t small, exactly, but next to Shiro she is slender and cute. 

 

Dammit. 

 

But she’s also a werewolf with a clear hatred of vampires. Not the best way to start a journey as soulmates.

 

Shiro decides to show her around the mansion later on, feeds Keith what leftovers Shiro has in her half-empty fridge and watches her eat with more fascination than necessary. Shiro’s own dinners are empty and lonely gatherings of just her and the spirits, sometimes the cats. Now the cats are still hiding from Keith and the spirits haven’t shown themselves.

 

Shiro tells Keith this as they make their way to the backyard with the body, tightly wrapped in a tarp and hanging over Keith’s shoulder like it weighed nothing. 

“Sad,” Keith says. She narrows her eyes at Shiro. “Also… spirits? So this place really is haunted?” 

 

Shiro huffs. “Not haunted. They’re not haunting me. They’re just… they’re leftovers of my passed relatives. They’re not here all the time. And they wouldn’t show themselves to someone like you.” She’s bundled up in a jacket, her snow-white hair curled up in a bun. In contrast, Keith still has no shoes but doesn’t seem to get cold. 

 

“Someone like you,” Keith echoes. “If your relatives are all prissy like you are, then I don’t mind never meeting them.” 

 

Shiro can practically see the walls between them. The ache to touch makes Shiro’s jaw clench. She sighs. The old keyring clinks and clanks as she pulls it out of her jacket pocket and unlocks one of the old outhouses, left to rot. She’s renovated some of them, those she has use for like this one. The incinerator stands next to the spare generator, the walls decorated with some extra tools the Shirogane janitors have used over the years.

 

“Dumped bodies before, huh?” Keith’s eyes are narrow as she drops the body from her shoulder to the incinerator.

 

Shiro’s jaw clenches. “Yes.” She makes sure the incinerator hasn’t clogged up again, makes sure the fire will actually burn the body to the bone and then turns it on, flips the lever to the right position. 

 

The machine coughs but turns on, the fire beginning to burn with such fierceness and brightness that even Shiro’s immortal eyes ache. She turns them away, looks at Keith. 

 

Keith is staring back at her. “Just how old are you exactly?” Keith’s arms are crossed. 

 

Shiro exhales slowly. “Old.” She smiles and takes her leave, her smile twitching when Keith follows. “It will burn some time. I will go flip the lever then.”

 

“Huh,” is all Keith says. She follows Shiro all the way back to the main building but stops by the front porch. “I - I don’t believe in soulmates.” 

 

Shiro sighs, hand on the door knob. “It’s not something you can wish away, Keith. Have you never met soulmates? They exist. Not everyone finds theirs.”

 

Keith’s walls are up, her armour on. She’s distant from Shiro, the laziness, softness of her sleep long gone. This wolf-girl wants to run because it’s all she knows. “Yeah, because it’s bullshit. Maybe you put some mumbo-jumbo on me so this stain on me isn’t going away.” Keith flinches when Shiro reaches to her. 

 

Shiro pulls her hand back, unable to prevent hurt from showing on her face.

 

*

 

Shiro shows the rest of her house to Keith. She has nothing better to do and Keith seems interested enough: if you can call throwing quips about the building’s bad shape interested. 

 

“I will not throw you out, no matter how much you insult my family and my house,” Shiro says calmly, arms crossed. 

 

They make their way to the more modern part of the house: Shiro’s gym. It’s sleek white and black, every piece of machinery routinely polished and kept in check. 

 

Keith grins when she spots the sparring mat and the punching bag. “You know what, vamp? As much as you stink like the dead and live in a ruin, I like this place.” Something else radiates from her, shows on the tiny minuscule movements of her body, of her face. But Shiro can’t tell. She just can’t tell. If they were committed, their soul bond confirmed, she could. 

 

“Not into charity but you are into my gym?” Shiro lifts an eyebrow. 

 

Keith shoots her a look. “I’m not gonna let you feed me. Sure, I’ll steal your clothes, the not skimpy ones - “ she eyes Shiro’s cleavage and Shiro frowns, “- but I think our appetites are for different things. But this gym? Yeah. It’d be nice to have a place to work out in. Do I look like I’d be let into any of the city’s own gyms? Or have the money for it? Lady, I don’t have money in the first place. It’s not like I can pay you back.” Keith’s fingers are twitching. There is a yellow glow in her eyes again. Is that a hint of fangs? Does her hair curl longer, coarser, into fur? 

 

Werewolves smell different than humans, but only barely. Except when they are wolfing out, so to speak. Shiro takes a deep breath and lifts her hands, palms up. “Listen, Keith - I do not expect payment from you. I will not keep you prisoner here. I simply took you here to address your wounds and get you cleaned up because I will not tolerate unnecessary violence in my city.” By the gods, but her soul mark itches. Her fingers twitch with the need to scratch it but she clenches her jaw and refrains. 

 


	4. spirits

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Outside the wolves howl."

Despite threatening to do so, Keith doesn’t leave. She stalks the haunted halls of the Shirogane mansion like a woman on a mission, eats what Shiro offers to her with short, angry bites. 

 

Shiro gets the feeling that some of that anger is a ruse an armour Keith has crafted around herself because of a hard life. Keith may have lived for a shorter while than Shiro, but that much is obvious: the slash of a scar on Keith’s cheek, the haunted look in her eyes, her tattered state when Shiro had first found her - that is not the way a Shirogane’s soulmate should be.

 

Bringing up the soulmate issue only brings out a fierce burst of anger, so Shiro doesn't. It hurts her to do so, the unconsummated soulbond between them throbbing, giving her headaches not even her favourite bath bombs or snacks can ease up. 

 

If she feels this pain, then Keith has to do so too.

Instead of a willing, caring soulmate, Shiro gets an unwilling, cranky housemate. As Shiro is largely nocturnal, she isn’t used to much sunlight - or artificial light, prefers to keep her house dimly lit. Keith seems to never sleep at all, maybe takes her residence on one of the couches, half of them covered with white sheets or some dark corner of the Shirogane mansion - she always seems to be there when Shiro wakes with the setting sun. 

 

“I’m going out,” Keith says a night and a half after they had burned the corpse. 

 

Shiro had gone out the previous night. To ask around. She has a few friends in the City, doesn’t like to use her thrall on them but she does when she needs to. Nobody had seen or heard anything. 

 

Shiro, in the middle of a workout, stops. She lowers the weight and doesn’t miss the way Keith’s gaze flickers to Shiro’s straining bicep. Shiro still stifles the hope that their soulmate bond will get consummated anytime soon. Keith is skittish enough. 

 

So Shiro hides her mark like Keith does to hers and smiles. “Do you intend to go alone?” 

 

Keith flashes her teeth at Shiro. “I’m a big girl, vamp. Besides, I don’t think other wolves like you much.” 

 

Shiro reveals her own teeth in return. “How would you know, puppy? From what I’ve seen, you are all alone.” 

 

Keith’s snarl is not as impressive as Keith probably hopes it is. She scratches her soul mark, clearly frustrated with it, frustrated with Shiro. 

 

“Are you going to come back?” Shiro licks her lips. She knows Keith will return. If not instantly, then later. That’s how soul bonds work, especially unconsummated ones like theirs. Keith will be unable to resist. 

 

Keith knows it too. Her eyes gleam a gorgeous golden, her teeth lengthen. “Fuck you,” she says and then she’s off, with a whip of shaggy dark hair. How badly would Keith struggle if Shiro pulled her close and ran her fingers through those dark strands? How badly would Keith howl if Shiro forced her to take a bath instead of just smashing water into her face and hoping it’s enough? 

 

Shiro sighs. A werewolf’s blood is all but ash to vampires, a fact that never seems to stop pissing the younger vamps off - but if it is a soulmate’s blood? Just a droplet could be the most decadent nectar to Shiro. 

 

She licks her lips. 

 

“If only,” she whispers. 

 

*

 

Shiro works out, grows hungry at every punch of her gloves against the bag. The mansion is once more nothing but an old corpse. She slips through its halls after her bath, wrapped in her silky rope, unbothered by the loose bow being the only thing keeping her body hidden. After all, there is no one to see. After all, Shiro is centuries past any form of shame about her body. It is a body that has kept her going since her birth, past her natural death into this undead unlife. She snacks on one of the bloodbags she keeps in her fridge, sucks on the straw and hums as she makes her way to the mausoleum. There are some of her children here, laid to rest. Sometimes Shiro has thought about joining them, sometimes she has - she has slept through most of the Crusades, a part of the apartheid, missed the first years of world war one. She knows how to exist like this now but still she grows tired.

 

Today Shiro seats herself to the tomb of one of her descendants, a Renessaince noble man. He was the child of one of Shiro’s great-great-great-great-grandchildren and, never learned of Shiro’s true nature. Alphonso was a painter and was full of dreams. Shiro has kept his paintings in her attic, has put up some of them when she has felt like remodeling. Alphonso’s spirit is a shy one, a mere spectre of the man who was, but it pulses the same warmth as he did when he was alive. 

 

Sometimes the spirits Shiro has in the mansion seem almost alive, sometimes they are like this: faint balls of energy and light, mere whispers of the people who were. It is a curse and a blessing to remember them all. Not all of the people with Shirogane blood have stayed at the mansion, but so many of them have. 

 

That’s why so many of their spirits remain here, attracted to the lethal life in Shiro. 

 

“Hello, loves,” she whispers to the quiet of the mausoleum and smiles at the little flickering lights. She sips her blood, a chilly snack of her own choosing. It turns into decadence on her tongue.

 

She recognizes the first flickering light as Alphonso, remembers his curious eyes at her, his wishes to paint her. Shiro had enjoyed the Renaissance very much and had preferred to stay at the Shirogane mansion for as long as possible, always the mysterious relative, a noble lady, sometimes a servant, always there, always watching. 

 

Alphonso’s spirit flies around her, pulses, like beating a heart that neither of them no longer have. He sends a pulse of uncertainty, confusion. More spirits appear, some form shadowy human shapes, all reaching for her. Shiro gathers them to her chest and thinks about her love for them, as hard as she can.

“Did you guys see something? Did the man die on my porch? Who left him there?” Shiro bites her lip, her fingers brushing through the shadow strands of yet another descendant’s hair. 

“Don’t know - “ is whispered into Shiro’s ear. “Gold,” whispers another. Alphonso, or perhaps his baby cousin Amanda, who knows to send Shiro a flash of a clawed hand on the dead man’s chest. 

 

She frowns. 

“Howling at the moon,” a spirit whispers. “You are queen here but outside - “

“Outside the wolves howl,” Shiro murmurs. “Of course they do. One puppy even arrived to my door.” At that, she grins, notices frustration from the spirits, a flash of fear. They don’t like the werewolves, even now, at modern age, wolves are not welcome in civilized society.

 

“Be at ease, children,” Shiro says. “She is no danger to you. And she is welcome here. Crude she may be, she is meant for me.” At that, she sighs. “I’ll fall in love with her, I know it. But will she love me?” The spirits embrace her, whisper of longing and love and care. “Ah. Forgive an old sentimental fool. I need to figure this out.” 

 

“Gold,” Alphonso whispers, a pale imitation of the bright voice that was. 

“They play in the woods and they love all things dark,” purrs a sultry seductress, one of Shiro’s own past lovers, her spirit attached to this place. Dominique was slaughtered here, murdered in jealous rage. Shiro feels her cold arms, made of shadows and longing. 

 

“Should I doubt the wolves then, loves?” Shiro crushes her emptied blood bag. “What kind of a wolf threatens me like this? They know me. I know the closest wolf tribes are miles away. And the wolfsbane… my Keith could not even touch the body.” 

“Not here before - “ 

“New ones?” Shiro paces. She doesn’t need lights to see. The mausoleum hasn’t had electricity ever - the only source of light is the ancient torch on the wall and she doesn’t bother with it. She can see perfectly in the dark. “Who is so stupid? So ambitious? They know this City is my territory.” She paces. She paces. She thinks. If she had a heartbeat, it would be quickening now. Her heart must be a withered black thing by now, the stolen blood in her veins keeping her flush-cheeked. “I - I feel excited. I have been threatened, on the porch of my own home no less yet I feel excited.”

 

One of her spirits purrs at her, a suggestion that she laughs at. “The police? The police know me, that is true. But there is no body anymore. I could spin a story, of course.” Alphonso’s spirit goes static at that, affronted. Shiro kisses him, the light of his spirit merely a brush of feathers against her lips. “I have lived too long for morals, dearest. And a little lie is the least of my sins. Ah. I must plan now. Join me, if you will. Show yourselves to Keith if you want to. I’m not sure she can see you, but if she does - don’t take her rudeness to heart. It is not born out of malice, but out of solitude. I can handle solitude but she can’t.” 

 

Shiro pulls back, back towards the mausoleum doors. “I will see you later, dearest.” The spirits reach for her, always drawn to her light. They whisper the same words again: gold, play, woods, howl, always howling. 

 

Shiro locks the doors behind herself and takes her empty blood bag to the trash. She makes sure there isn’t a droplet of blood left on her face and makes her way outside. The moon is at half this time, a pale bone-white. She gazes at it for a long, long time. 

 

Wolves, huh? 

 

She takes her jacket with her and heads for the city center, through the streets she knows well. She knows the police station is open around the clock, knows the midnight receptionist intimately. Officer Ling had been the one to offer, two months ago. It hadn’t happened again but still officer Ling’s eyes widen at the sight of Shiro. 

 

Shiro smiles. “Hello.”

Officer Ling clears his throat. “G-good night, miss Shirogane. How may I be of assistance?”

Shiro saunters to the counter, presses her palms to it. “I would like to talk to you about missing people in this city.”


	5. Chapter 5

Nobody has gone missing in the city in the past two years. Nobody except the three grandmothers from three blocks over has died in the city in the past six months. Officer Ling, bless his frantically beating young heart, tries carefully to inquire why Shiro is so interested in knowing.

 

For a friend, she says. Maybe burning the body had been a too hasty of a decision, but Shiro will deal with it. It’s not like humans would know what to do with it. Shiro can’t have drunk dead blood and Keith couldn’t have taken a bite or sniffed around. 

 

There had been nothing, all hints of any identity erased from the man’s corpse on Shiro’s doorstep. 

 

Not knowing what’s going on has left a restlessness in Shiro’s old bones. She jokes about it to Keith, who prefers to spend her time lurking about the Shirogane mansion and gets a dry look in return. 

 

“You’re not that old,” Keith says. She’s gotten out of the tub, leaving behind a mess in one of the mansion’s bathrooms. Her hair still drips water to the floor. Being close to her makes Shiro’s heart sing. Keith is so sublime. Keith is a part of Shiro’s soul. Shiro digs her nails into her arms to prevent herself from touching. 

 

“I am a little old,” Shiro says, keeps her tone cheerful. 

 

Keith stares, that pretty purple gleam in her big pretty eyes. Then she rolls her eyes, rolls her shoulders. She swipes her hair from her face. “Wolves have been at your door, vamp,” she says. “I smelled them in the woods last night.” 

 

Shiro opens her mouth, closes it. She knows of no wolf who would dare to come this close to Shiro’s territory. She is old enough to be powerful to take down the biggest, fiercest wolf. They wouldn’t dare. 

“Were they far?” 

 

Keith’s eyes seem to have started to glow. She reveals her teeth. “A few kilometres. They smelled strange.” 

 

Shiro narrows her eyes. 

 

Keith turns away from her, shoulders hunched. The sight of it breaks Shiro’s heart. If only Keith realized Shiro would never hurt her. Choosing a werewolf for a soulmate wasn’t in the cards but if that is what the universe, gods, whatever, wants for Shiro, then so be it. Having a conversation with Keith so far has proved to be impossible: Keith’s walls are up constantly, her armour too hard for Shiro’s kindness to strike through. 

 

But so far, Keith has stuck around. Being a vampire, Shiro doesn’t need to eat, not really, but she keeps buying groceries for Keith. She keeps making lunches and dinners that tend to disappear from the table as soon as she turns her back. 

 

Still Keith looks at her, too vary to get close. 

 

No matter what Shiro asks her, Keith doesn’t answer. Or Keith bares her teeth, her fangs bigger, sharper than Shiro’s and growls. 

 

“You don’t have to fight alone, Keith,” Shiro says. “You don’t have to do anything alone anymore.” 

 

“You’ll leave too,” Keith whispers. “Everyone does.” She marches out before Shiro can speak another word, like ashamed of saying anything so vulnerable. 

 

*

 

When Shiro sleeps and the sun is high in the sky, quick, quick steps find their way to the front door of the mansion. Blood drips on the steps, splashes filth on the ages old stone. The mansion has born the lives and deaths of dozens. What is one more? 

 

Keith’s eyes snap open, glowing in the dark of the living room around her. The couch creaks as she sits up and sniffs the air. 

 

The wolf in her growls. 

 

Swiftly she strips and changes, lets her skin ripple, her bones crack. Her fur is the same inky black as her hair, her eyes the same glittering purple. Her teeth are long and sharp gravestones of death. She is Keith, the girl of unmeasurable age, born to parents long gone. She is the black wolf, swift as the wind. She’s out of front door in seconds, growling at the air, smelling sickly sweet. 

 

There was a wolf here, a stranger, an intruder. The ground has barely gone cold after the paws of this other. Keith sniffs around, her ears flattened to her skull. 

 

The wind whispers the answer to her: the intruding wolf has gone to the woods, spreading thick and dark beyond the boundary of the Shirogane mansion. Keith sneezes at the thick, sickly sweet air, her paws bothering the dead leaves littering the ground. Only then she turns to look at what has been nailed into the front door. 

 

It’s a voodoo doll, crudely made in the Shirogane matriarch’s image, wisps of white strings to make up for Shiro’s silky hair, two grey buttons for eyes. The nails have been driven through the tiny palms, through the tiny chest. 

 

Keith sniffs, sniffs, sniffs, then growls. 

 

She pulls the crude thing off and chews it to pieces. 

 

She steps on the pieces for good measure, carefully licks the drops of blood that have been splattered on the front steps. It is bitter, sharp, not the smooth taste of a prey animal, doesn’t smell like Shiro does: like heat and life and safety. 

 

Keith’s tail is between her legs. Her ears still flatten against her skull as she heads into the woods. Someone wants to leave messages for Shiro. 

 

*

 

So Keith runs. The woods are immeasurably dark, the thick oaks stretching far into the sky, blocking out the sun almost entirely. The sky shows itself through tiny blotches, between thick, luscious leaves. The strange wolves with their sharp smells have to be somewhere around here. Keith sniffs. Keith pushes her snout to the ground and growls, growls because she can’t tell where the smells are coming from. All around her, the woods are alive with little sounds of mice, bugs, little birds fluttering from tree to tree. To her, forests are never quiet. 

 

As usual, the soulmark, a splotch of colour on her arm - now her front leg - itches and drives her mad. It constantly tugs at her to turn back, to go to her soulmate, to push herself against Shiro and - 

 

Keith can’t. She’s already stayed for days in the sprawling mansion with its ghosts and its lonely matriarch. That is days too long. 

 

So she runs through the woods, scrapes her paw on a tree trunk, hunts for mice lost from their safe little nests. The strange wolves stay in the shadows. Keith yips at the trees, at the flickering shadows and runs back, runs the whole way back to the mansion. 

 

She shifts back to two legs and two arms at the front door. 

 

As usual after shifting, she takes a moment to breathe and re-orient herself, back to standing upright and breathing with a human’s lungs. Her teeth are the last ones to shift, to shrink back into human teeth, she smacks her lips together and then stretches. 

 

Someone wolf-whistles. 

 

“I didn’t think I’d find one of Shiro’s lovers prancing around naked, but wow.” 

 

Keith turns. She doesn’t mind the chill on her naked, scraped skin. The one standing by the front steps is yet another woman, head tilted. She’s covered from head to toe, only her smirking lips visibly underneath large sunglasses. 

 

Keith doesn’t have to smell her to know this is an another vampire. 

 

The woman smiles. “Gonna let me in, puppy?” 

 

Keith growls. “Shiro is asleep.” 

 

The vampire shrugs. “Always the traditional one, that Shiro. So who are you then, puppy?” She steps closer. 

 

Keith grounds herself. “Fuck off. I don’t know who you are. But I don’t want you -  “ near Shiro. Nowhere near Shiro. Shiro is - Shiro… Shiro is - Keith shoves that thought down, deep, deep where she keeps her heart of glass, the fragile memories of a past that had chipped away at her soul bit by bit. 

 

The vampire giggles and the sound grates Keith, scratches at her ears like nails on a chalkboard. “Don’t you worry, puppy. Shiro is expecting me. I know she always sleeps the nights but personally… I have preferred the day. No matter if I become ash at direct contact.” Another shrug. So casual. As if they are friends. 

 

Keith rips the door open and goes.

 

The vampire follows. “Invite me in, puppy.” 

 

Keith leaves the door open, doesn’t care for the way those hidden eyes trace her naked body. “Shiro can invite you in.” 

 

The vampire reveals her teeth but she waits. 

 

Keith fetches her clothes and hides, deep, deep in the basement of the house, listens to the chitter and chatter of the rats in the walls and the sighs of the dead. The house is as alive as Shiro is, both relics of times long gone. 

 

Keith opens the door to Shiro’s bedroom, deep, deep, in the basement, smells her soulmate’s scent of lilies. Keith sees Shiro’s white hair, spread on her pillows, the curled hand close to her closed eyes, her parted lips. 

 

This is what Keith hasn’t told Shiro: that Keith can’t wish away the need to protect Shiro’s sleep. 

 

So Shiro sleeps on, oblivious to the world, wrapped in the inky black of her sheets, her body as pale as marble. So Keith watches on, closed to the world. She hopes idly that her own scent will remain in the room, long after she’s gone. 


	6. Chapter 6

 

Officer Ling isn’t unused to danger. His father was an officer, his mother worked for the FBI. Somewhere in the lineup of his family is a mob boss, a pirate and a lunatic who claimed to be a werewolf but was mostly believed to just be a man gone crazy after the murder of his wife. Officer Ling knows all of this and doesn’t believe the stories, the gossip, any of it. Officer Ling believes in what he sees and knows, like the fact that his City is just a city, it isn’t worse or better than any of the others. 

 

Officer Ling also knows there is something wrong with Miss Shirogane. Could be just that she’s a millionaire, apparently and millionaires tend to be eccentric. After all, she lives in that odd crumbling house, rumoured to be haunted, all by herself. She’s apparently been living there for the past twenty years, still looking ageless, unchanged. 

 

Officer Ling doesn’t believe in the supernatural, but there is something strange in Miss Shirogane. The things about her he has heard numerous times: that she’s just a weird reclusive millionaire, that she’s hiding in her mansion because she’s done something awful from wherever she moved from. That she’s a vampire. She wouldn’t be the first or only person to only move after sunset, though, as officer Ling reminds anyone spreading that particular rumour. 

 

Miss Shirogane is certainly beautiful, but she is frightening. She is built broad-shouldered and small-waisted, her prosthetic arm frighteningly thick and sleek and modern, nothing like officer Ling has ever seen. She is a mystery, like a secret the City wants to keep and so officer Ling keeps his distance. 

 

He is doing his patrols that one particular night, autumn creepier and colder outside of his car. In the radio, a woman with a husky voice croons about lost love. Idly officer Ling taps his fingers against the steering wheel and squints at the darkened houses. In the background, the Shirogane mansion is a black, looming shadow, faintly lit by the star-touched sky. 

 

A twinge of unnatural fear brushes officer Ling. 

“Stupid,” he murmurs. “I hardly think the mansion is going to kill me.” Yet he can’t shake away the feeling that something is staring at him from the dark, just beyond the headlights of his car or the street lights, from the darkened yards or behind the black windows. 

 

Officer Ling parks by a curve of a street and gets out, digging for a cigarette. He keeps one ear on the police radio but as usual, it is silent. He squashes the part of him that wishes there was something and reminds himself that silence is good. Silence means safety. 

The smoke from his cigarette slithers towards the dark sky. 

 

Officer Ling inhales and exhales, deeply, slowly. He’s in the process of inhaling again when he hears it: an unlikely sound, this far from their usual territories.

 

A wolf is howling. 

 

“The fuck,” officer Ling spits into the dark and lets his cigarette drop. He steps on it and stares hard into the dark. There aren’t wolves in here. Even the forest behind the Shirogane mansion is merely inhabited by one sleepy bear. Certainly not wolves. 

 

Yet the wolf gets an answer from another. And another. 

 

Officer Ling’s heart begins to race. The sound echoes, the howls coming from all around him, the animals communicating with each other. They’re too cowardly to come straight into the City like this: the City isn’t a city of skyscrapers and big, sprawling streets. Yet it is still a city of people, not animals. 

 

Wolves don’t come this close to where humans live. They just don’t. 

 

Still officer Ling’s hands shake as he struggles to open the car door. 

 

That hesitation, few mere seconds, is enough for him to get cornered. The creature, no, the man, appears as silent as a shadow and slams officer Ling against the car, full of hot breath and the smell of rot and decay. 

“My, my,” snarls an animalistic, inhuman voice, claws, no, hands wrapping around officer Ling and dumping him into the ground. 

 

All air is slammed from officer Ling’s mouth, gravel rubbing his cheek bloody. A heavy boot steps on his back and grinds down. Officer Ling moans in pain. 

“W-who, what? Attacking a police off- “ he yells when his arm is wrenched back, breaking with a nauseating crack. Something drip, drip, drips on officer Ling’s back. He struggles, but the hand gripping him is iron tight. He wheezes, pain flashing through him.

 

“We witnessed you having a nice little chat with that vamp bitch,” growls the voice above him. The hot, rot-smelling breath hits officer Ling’s neck. He grimaces, blinking rapidly. His vision is blurry, it’s too dark to see. 

 

“V-vamp?” His mind, even addled with pain, goes straight to drugs. Or alcohol. There hadn’t been any drug problems in the City, but people found their addictions wherever. 

 

The voice above him turns into growl, inhuman growl that brings officer Ling’s skin to goosebumps. He wheezes, as he’s grinded into the dirt. 

 

But just then, another howl echoes through the darkened streets and the grip on officer Ling’s arm loosens. 

 

“Not one of us,” hisses another voice nearby, unseen. 

“No,” hisses yet another. 

 

“Kill them, whoever the fuck they are,” growls the big man holding officer Ling and grips him again, wrenching him up, slamming him back against the car. “I am hungry for a little police officer now.” 

 

That is all the big stranger manages to say before something comes running out of the darkness, with the speed of a bullet, something with four legs and glowing, yellow eyes.

 

Officer Ling is thrown down to the street again and he goes, broken arm and all, shouting with pain. The pain is sharp and piercing, he quickly rolls on his stomach and wheezes, getting air back into his lungs. He hears yowls and growling, yips of creatures, no, wolves just behind him. He doesn't look. He can’t look. He crawls to his car and reaches for the door handle.  

 

The side mirror reflects flashes of bloodied fur and snarling teeth. Officer Ling gasps and crawls into his car, quickly locking the door behind himself. He looks then, stares to where three, no, maybe more, wolves are tearing each other apart. Officer Ling gulps. 

 

Where did the men go? What is this? Rabies? With a shaking, bloodied hand, officer Ling reaches for his radio. 

 

He yelps when something slams against his window. It’s a girl, a strange wide-eyed girl, her face bloodied, her hands dripping red. 

“Fucking run!” She yells, screams when she’s wrenched away, back to the dark. 

 

Officer Ling’s vision fades and he blinks hard, scrambling for his radio again. But the radio merely hisses and sizzles, the static screeching at him so loud that he shouts, trying to cover two ears with one working arm. 

“Where’s that fucking phone.” His bag is in the backseat and when he tries to reach for it, the door is slammed open and the same bloodied girl drops in, still wild-eyed and shaggy-haired. She has scratches all over her face, a larger gash on her arm. 

 

“What the fuck are you staring? Drive!” 

 

Officer Ling breathes harder, harsher and turns the car back on, his hand trembling too bad. The car is slammed into, the strange, rabid wolves howling louder, fiercer. Snarling teeth seem to surround the entire car but somehow, officer Ling manages to get the car driving. 

“What the fuck,” he hisses, clutching the steering wheel with white knuckles. 

 

The girl stares at him. “To the Shirogane mansion. Just do it.” She’s bleeding all over the back seats, she isn’t wearing a seat belt and she looks like a wild child, like she had arm wrestled wolves and won. 

 

“What the fuck,” officer Ling says again. “Who are you? I could arrest you too, you know.” Blood tastes bitter on the officer’s tongue. 

 

“You won’t,” the girl says. Her voice is lower than expected, a husky whisper of a voice. Her eyes look oddly purple. “Just drive to the mansion.”

 

“I wouldn’t want to impose, ow, dammit,” officer Ling murmurs. “I’d rather go to the hospital. My arm - “

 

“It will be fine,” the girl says. “And I won’t go to a hospital.” 

 

“You’re bleeding all over my car.” Officer Ling glances at her, once more. She isn’t looking at him anymore, merely staring out of the window. Officer Ling’s jaw tightens but he finds himself turning left towards the mansion. 

 

He’s only talked to Miss Shirogane a handful of times. He knows more of her reputation than the woman herself. “Do you know Miss Shirogane?” 

 

It appears to be the wrong question because the girl hisses. “Just drive and don’t ask questions.” She’s holding her other arm now and breathing heavier. 

 

Officer Ling fights against the need to be responsible, he’s probably not that much older than this girl anyway, he’s the authority - but he drives to the mansion, parks by the opened gates. Before he’s even managed to turn the motor off, the girl is climbing off the car. 

“Come inside,” she says to him and he goes, heart thunderous. 

“We should go to the hospital and I need to inform my superiors and - “ Officer Ling’s words die on his tongue when he sees the front door open to reveal Miss Shirogane, dressed in a loose-fitting kimono, holding a cup of tea. 

 

“I saw you coming a long way away,” she says, her voice fond. She’s speaking to the strange girl. 

 

“Don’t,” the girl says. Her jaw is tight. “Fix him. He saw me. There were others.”

 

Miss Shirogane smiles, but her eyes are hard. She motions for them to come inside. “Others?” 

 

The girl nods and doesn’t specify. She brushes off Miss Shirogane’s hand and disappears down an unfamiliar corridor.

 

Only now, inside of the mansion, safe from strange wolves and strange visions, officer Ling collapses. 

“Miss S-Shirogane,” he manages, through bloody teeth. “I don’t wish to impose.” 

 

Her face hovers above him, beautiful, ageless. “Oh, dear officer. It will be alright.” She gathers him in her arms, lifting him like he weighed nothing. His head droops against her shoulder. “Sleep,” she whispers. 

 

And he does. 

 

*

 

The officer lumbers on in one of the abandoned bedrooms, the bed recently dusted, the window tightly closed to keep the night chill away. 

 

Shiro and Keith both remain by the door, watching him. 

“This is a shitty fucking idea,” Keith says. She’s on pins and needles, all bathed and clean now, wrapped up in bandages. She had grudgingly accepted to borrow clothes from Shiro, once more. 

 

“Maybe.” Shiro’s arms are crossed, her nails digging into her arms. The need to touch Keith is worse with each night. “Who were they, Keith?” 

 

Keith’s mouth is tight. “Someone who shouldn’t be fucking around in vampire territory.” She reveals her teeth. “Your reputation reaches far and wide among the night children. I knew only one of them. An old, how do you say, acquaintance. I chased them off.” She doesn’t need to tell Shiro what those enemies had said. Shiro doesn’t need to know. 

 

Shiro still looks at her. “I see. Are you in pain?” Shiro reaches for her, manages to lay a warm, heavy hand on Keith’s shoulder and squeeze, before Keith turns away. 

 

“Not anything you can help with, vamp.” 

 

Shiro sighs. “I am not your enemy, Keith.” Shiro rubs her hand and stares again at the sleeping man. 

 

“No, you’re not,” Keith murmurs and retreats, away from the doorway, away from the pull of her own soul.  

 

*

 

Neither of the women know that they are being watched. The corpse of a mangled woman is tossed to Shiro's yard, dressed in red, her hair snow white. A letter is tossed over her, like trash. 

 

The Shirogane mansion has stood through two world wars, through robberies, through dozens of generations of the Shirogane family. Never before has it been the target of such sharp, heavy gazes. The two souls living in it, pulled towards each other, only know how heavy the walls are with their stories. They know not of the stories inside each other. 

 

They know not of the dangers outside the walls, the prowling wolves, the bloodthirsty enemies of everything that is good and anything that is love. 


End file.
